November 3, 2020

“They aren’t living in the real world,” I found myself thinking as I scrolled through my Facebook feed in bed one morning last week. “They” were a friend who had written—or shared, I’m not sure now—a lengthy post about how a vote for Trump in 2020 was the “most obvious” electoral decision of their lifetime.

“Of course, they would probably think that I’m the one who is not living in the real world,” I thought sometime later when I was rinsing my hair in the shower. “Maybe it’s helpful to step back and reserve judgments on whose world is ‘real.’ Instead: we’re living in different worlds.” 

It’s not a particularly novel idea—certainly not one original to me—but for some reason that morning I was struck by the power of our different worlds. We the people lead such different lives, have such different goals, face such different problems. Our increasing distance from each other keeps us from recognizing the reality of the problems that other people face, leading us to conclude that political ideas we disagree with are solutions to problems that don’t really exist. We suffer, collectively, from myopia. 

Now I need to be clear: Just because we all face our own political and economic problems does not mean that all of our problems are equal. This could not be further from the truth. There are no equivalencies between the economic “problems” between a billionaire like Jeff Bezos and the problems of thousands of minimum wage warehouse workers at Amazon. There is also no equivalency between the problems faced by a middle-class family trying to shore up their 401(k) or their children’s college funds and the problems face by a working-class family or individual trying to make ends meet to pay their rent and put food on the table for the month. We all face economic problems, but some are more existential than others. 

Likewise, some are facing existential political crises, where others are not. The right to marry, the right to work, the right to equal treatment under the law, even the right to vote are threatened for some, while for others these have never even been questioned. Some of us feel secure in these rights, while others have never really had them. 

I wonder if the degree of anxiety we feel about today’s election serves as a metric for how high the economic and political stakes are for us. In recent days and this morning, I have seen various versions of “If my candidate doesn’t win the election, I won’t complain, I’ll go to work the next day, and life will go on.” The clear implication here is that anyone who does otherwise is somehow over-invested in the result of the election. Some—many—people baptize these sentiments with truisms like “God is in control,” implying further that any who respond in anger or anxiety to an election that goes south is lacking in faith. I confess I have little patience for this type of thinking and signaling, which seems to be calling for placation without doing anything to promote peace. 

“I wonder if the degree of anxiety we feel about today’s election serves as a metric for how high the economic and political stakes are for us.”

Rather than a signal of self-control or piety, I wonder if an ability to approach the election with equanimity is instead a bellwether for how much we and those proximal to us really stand to lose if our preferred candidate doesn’t win. Without trying to be overly cynical, it strikes me as unlikely that many twenty-first century Americans possess a degree of spiritual grounding that would be foreign to the sages and saints of history. As a case-in-point from the Christian tradition—both because this is the tradition I belong to and because it seems only to be Christians who are tempted to think this way within my circles—I’d point out that Jesus violently drove religious leaders out of the temple for taking economic advantage of foreigners and sweat drops like blood when facing his own execution at the hands of an unholy alliance between church and state.

It doesn’t seem, then, that faith in God means maintaining a façade of inner or outer peace when all is truly not right with the world. Real peace can only come when there is real economic and political justice, when the fractured relationships of our society are made whole again. So perhaps now, as then, our grief, our lament, and even our rioting say more about our sociopolitical location and the side of injustice we stand on than they do about our piety and faith. Maybe the ability to say “the result of the election today won’t shake me” is really just a guised way of saying “I’m not at risk of losing anything of true value here.” 

I am certainly not saying that trusting God is a bad thing or that the entirety of the future of this country pivots on who secures the presidency for the next four years. In no way do I think Joe Biden can or will be the savior of this country. But I am saying that the Christian belief in resurrection, which I take to undergird the blithest of the it-will-be-okays, is only intelligible in light of crucifixion. Those for whom true and immediate economic or political death are not on options at the ballot box today—those unlikely to have the nails of oppression driven into their own hands and feet—should exercise caution in making pronouncements about the “right” response to injustice and to elections. 

I write all of this as someone who, frankly, does not have much at risk in this election, at least not directly or immediately. It is, of course, true that the official Republican platform, which has been fully endorsed by President Trump, aims to overturn the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, removing federal protections for my marriage rights. But even here I am insulated by the fact that I live in San Francisco, California and, for unrelated reasons, do not ever plan to move to a place where these rights seem likely to be threatened. (Although, even in San Francisco, it is not unheard of to be harassed by strangers for being gay while walking down the streets; it has happened to me twice in the last month.) It’s also true that our national response to emergencies like COVID-19 and climate change affect everyone, including me personally, but even here the negative impact is not distributed. Even here, I have a leg up.

Here’s the reality of my own world: I’m a well-educated, white, cisgender man, the child of parents who, while not particularly rich, would be willing and able to help me out of pretty much any pinch I could reasonably find myself in. My social, political, and economic safety nets are tightly woven. The world I live in is mostly safe. I do have economic and political problems, and sometimes they feel overwhelming, but I have to remind myself that they are relatively small.

For many people in this country, this is simply not the case. The list is so long I am hesitant to even start it. But this applies to people of color, particularly Black Americans, who do not have the same protections and opportunities that I do. This applies to the urban poor who are pushed out of their neighborhoods by people like me who move into cities but don’t fight hard enough for equitable housing policies. This applies to the rural poor whose needs have been neglected and whose voices have been left unheard. This applies to my trans friends who are at significantly higher risk of discrimination and violence than I am. This applies to religious minorities—no, not Christians—who are targeted by travel bans and fear-mongering. I may walk the same streets and ride the same buses as these people, but we live in meaningfully different worlds, and it is only through my proximity to them or my willingness to engage their stories that I will ever see the reality of their worlds and appreciate the problems that have been thrust upon them. I can’t speak in certain terms for anyone reading these words, but I know these people have much more at stake in this election than I do.

“I think the future of our nation pivots more on whether we will be able to move into each other’s worlds today, tomorrow, next week, in a month, and further in the future.”

Still, as I began to say above, I do not believe the fate of our nation pivots on the result of this election, whether we know it today, tomorrow, next week, or next month. I think the future of our nation pivots more on whether we will be able to move into each other’s worlds today, tomorrow, next week, in a month, and further in the future.

Here’s where I don’t know how to land the plane; I don’t think any of us do. I want to say that we all need to open up our tables, invite those different from us to have a seat, and break bread together, sharing of our lives and ourselves. I want to say that we need to find ways to move toward rather than away from each other. I want to say that sitting in a circle singing Kumbaya might actually solve most of our problems in the long run, even if it didn’t fix things overnight. Maybe then we would actually be able to see each other. Perhaps this is naïve, but maybe we really do need more childlike faith in this world.

And yet, while I really do believe these things are true, I struggle to say them because we live in such different worlds, and many seem hellbent to keep it that way. It is hard to open up your table to people who live and vote as if they do not want you to live in the same country as them, who do not want you to obtain or maintain the rights they have always enjoyed. It is hard to open up your table to people who seem like the enemy. I wonder if we’re all just afraid to take the first step towards those who seem situated against us. To be sure, from my vantage point, this fear is far more legitimate for some than others: some of us just have a whole lot more at risk. Many have a whole lot more at risk than I do, and I am loathe to tell these people that they need to risk offering embrace to those who have repeatedly shown indifference to their needs. But I’m not sure what other option we have. 

I don’t know how to land the plane because I want to say two things that seem to contradict each other: We all face real problems in this country, and yet some of these problems are simply more pressing than others. It takes tremendously hard work to recognize that another’s needs are greater than your own and to stop focusing on yours to address theirs. 

The Presidency is important, and I believe we need a President that seeks the good of the entire nation with a particular emphasis on the “least of these,” the political and economic outsiders. But more than this—indeed, in order to even have this—we need a populous that seeks the good of those unlike us just as much as those like us. We need to remember that we are all in very much in this together, that our fates are tied. We need to be fighting for each other like our lives depend on it because, as this year has laid in stark relief, they do, and this (like everything else) for some more than others.

This election is apocalyptic. I don’t mean that I believe the world is ending, although it does feel like that some times. I mean, instead, that it is an apocalypse in the original sense of the word, that it is an unveiling, a revelation of who we are individually and as a nation. I, like many others, am scared to see what it reveals about me and about us. May we be able to look at what is revealed honestly, to see ourselves and to see each other. May we be able to acknowledge of our complicity in injustice and demand—yes, demand—justice for those who do not receive it. As we become people of justice, may we become people of peace. 

May we move towards living in one world, with liberty and justice for all.